April 7, 2014

Untitled RSM 174038

Always amazed as one one thing seems to lead into another. I have been a fan of Bill Jacobson’s photographs and I curated his photobook A Series of Human Decisions into the recent 10×10 American Photobooks exhibition in Tokyo last year. Prior to this book, Jacobson has completed a series of somewhat related photographs since 1987 but noted for the fact that the photographs were purposefully out of focus, see image from his earlier book Photographs.

So while having dinner at a local pizza pub, I decided to photograph a person sitting at the adjacent bar. When I went to zoom in with my Samsung camera on a tighter composition, the magnification in conjunction with the low light was a challenge to the camera-phone and while it was just trying to auto-focus, I made the exposure above. A Jacobson moment.

An impressionist and ambiguous image, with shapes, color and mass that hint at something that seems tangible. Subsequently I have found it hard to duplicate. Much easier to obtain the same effect with a manual focus camera.